


One Tin Soldier

by Professor_Fluffy



Series: Stony Non-Kink One-Shot Prompt Fills [1]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-09
Updated: 2013-04-09
Packaged: 2017-12-08 00:03:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/754634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Professor_Fluffy/pseuds/Professor_Fluffy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt Request: Tony sees Steve cry in pain and goes crazy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Tin Soldier

Tony’s seen Steve in every sort of physical pain, and Steve takes it. He never complains. He never cries. Never shouts. He never gets mad. Tony’s seen Steve with his teeth smashed in, spitting blood and teeth onto the pavement. He’s seen him without fingernails. He’s seen him bleeding out on the battlefield because the stubborn son of a bitch is far too willing to take hits meant for the rest of them. His logic is just as fucked up as Tony’s. Steve Rogers can regenerate teeth and nails at an accelerated speed, and that’s supposed to make it ok.

The above variables combine to form the golden ration of Tony Stark logic. Tony Stark can’t afford to be friends with Steve Rogers, because Tony Stark doesn't let his friends get hurt. Period. He keeps DUM-E and U locked up in the workroom, and he’d stick Rhodey and Pepper down there too if it didn't show such blatant disregard for their personal preferences - or so he’s been told. It’s bad enough that the robots have Stockholm Syndrome. Pepper says he’s confusing loyalty with Stockholm Syndrome, but he’s really not.

And just like that, they’ll never be friends. It’s decided. Locked in. An incontrovertible fact, as solid and reassuringly familiar as his inability to divide by zero. But Rogers is like the king of fucking quantum physics, he refuses to be defined by normal rules, and eventually, through some illogical path too convoluted for a rational mind to follow, he slips past Tony’s defenses. First in the guise of an angry fuck buddy, Tony’s first mistake. Pepper has ruined him for casual, which really isn't his fault. Who could casually fuck Captain America? 

Once they work past the initial physicality of fucking their anger out through their dicks, they both begin to recognize each other as people, which counts as strike two on Tony’s list of shit that counts as ‘breaching his personal firewalls’. (Ha. Ha. Ha. _Pepper._ ) 

Eventually Steve carves a niche for himself, like every other foolish idiot in Tony’s life who’s refused to abandon him despite his innumerable plethora of issues. 

The day Tony realizes he’s done for, in the way some men are the second they place a ring on a certain woman’s finger - the moment he realizes his goose is well and truly cooked, is the moment he hears Steve's cry of pain on the battlefield, which is also the moment he well and truly loses his shit.

He’s never heard Steve make a sound like that, and in the end, when he comes down from his blackout rage to find even the Hulk is giving him a wide berth, he realizes that he’s looming over Steve, his suit scratched and battered from slamming it down a narrow alley in pursuit of the miserable creature who’d pulled that broken noise from Steve’s throat, the suit losing energy like a sieve from the abuse of power he’d used to blow some Hydra goon’s head halfway across Manhattan. And when he finds out why, he almost sags to his knees right in the middle of the street, because Steve isn’t hurt, not physically, but the compass he’s holding cradled in his hand is broken, almost irreparably so, and his hands are curled around two soggy cutouts, like he's lost everything. There’s a look on his face that’s so open and venerable that Tony can feel it straight through his arc reactor. Tony can see, one cutout is a tiny black and white picture of Peggy Carter, but the other is a picture of him, with a rare, genuine smile on his face. Steve makes a move to hide it, but he’s already seen, and that’s the moment when Tony is finally willing to admit to himself that he is so gone over this man, this man who won’t give in to pain or suffering, but who’s willing to cry over something like _this_. 

He takes the compass from Steve’s hands with a gentleness that belies the brutality of his earlier actions, and he can feel the team closing in around them. 

He holds his gauntleted hand out, and his voice is thick with unexpressed emotion, “Come home, Steve. I’ll fix it. It’ll be ok. Just come home.” 

_Steve does._


End file.
